Oatmeal cookies – hypoallergenic, vegan, dairy free, nut free, wheat free, oil free, sugar free (and magically still so tasty!)

I’ve been having some crazy allergic reactions to …something… it’s unclear what. So I’m on a hypoallergenic diet at the moment, which means no dairy, no wheat, no nuts (basically, all that good stuff). This makes finding allergy friendly cookies a bit tricky.

Looking online for “hypoallergenic cookies” I didn’t find much. A lot of the vegan recipes call for butter substitutes, which I’m trying to avoid; or nuts or wheat, which aren’t hypoallergenic. So I decided to repurpose my favorite oatmeal cookies recipe (the Cook’s Illustrated oatmeal chocolate chip recipe) with some adjustments to switch out the problem stuff, and make my own allergy friendly version.

They turned out great! Crunchy on the outside and moist and chewy on the inside, with a really comforting oatmeal cookie flavor.

I haven’t tried making them “big cookie” size; if you want to give that a go you might want to reduce the oven temp to 325⁰F. My significant other says these are the cookie version of a bowl of oatmeal, so they might be good with an added 1/2 c raisins too if you feel comfortable adding those.

Note on allergies: Theoretically it’s possible to develop an allergy to anything, so if you aren’t sure what you are allergic to, ask your doctor about the ingredients you see below before eating them.

• These DO contain garbanzo beans, and rarely some people may be allergic to beans. As long as you don’t have a true bean allergy, even for those whose stomachs are sensitive to most beans, garbanzo beans tend to be very tummy-friendly.
• The sugar I used, lakanto, does have xylitol in it, which may make some people a bit gassy. If you’re sensitive to that you may want the reduce it to 1 cup and avoid eating a very large amount of cookies at one sitting.
• If you are cooking for someone who has an allergy, check with them first if these ingredients are OK. Many people with a general gluten allergy are fine with oats, but people who have celiac disease may not be.
• The term “oil free” is widely misused to mean the same thing as “no added oil” or even “lots of oil but from whole foods only.” Technically these cookies do contain a bit of oil from the garbanzo beans, but it is a very small amount and not very likely to pose problems for people who are having trouble processing fats.

Hypoallergenic Oatmeal Cookies (vegan, dairy free, sugar free, oil free, nut free)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 c oat flour (from old fashioned oats — see instructions)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• Pinch of ground ginger
• Pinch of ground clove
• 1/3 cup garbanzo beans, reserve the water from the can separately
• 2 c summer squash, diced
• 1 1/4 c lakanto monkfruit sweetener brown sugar style (if you’re using another sugar replacement you may need to use less)
• 2 1/4 c old fashioned oats

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350⁰F. Put parchment paper on 2 baking sheets and set aside.
2. To make oat flour, measure out old fashioned oats to the desired amount you want to have as flour, plus 1-2 Tbsp. Run these oats in food processor until flourlike.
3. Thoroughly mix oat flour with other dry ingredients except actual oats, in a bowl. Set aside. Rinse food processor.
4. Put beans, squash, and 1/4 to 1/3 c of bean water into food processor (1/3 c is better if you are at a higher altitude). Process until it is smooth and about the same wetness as apple sauce. Put wet ingredients mix in a medium or large mixing bowl.
5. Mix dry ingredients into wet. Now mix in oats. Mix should be only a bit more crumbly than normal oatmeal cookies dough, and should hold together well if you squeeze it into a ball. If it’s too dry, add more bean water.
6. Squish 1-2 Tbsp of mix into a ball in your hand or using a measuring spoon, and place on parchment-paper-lined cookie sheet. If doing 2 Tbsp size cookies (1st photo below), flatten them into thick discs and then flatten sides so each cookie is a sort of small hockey puck shape. If doing 1 Tbsp tea-cookie size (2nd photo below), you can use a round tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop them out. You can space these (either size) about an inch apart, they will puff upward a bit but not really outward.
7. Bake about 12 minutes or until toasted a light brown around the tops. If you like a more doughy cookie, cook only until just barely toasted on tips of tops (like in 2nd photo below)
8. Remove from oven, and take cookies off of sheet to cool for at least 5min before eating. Store in an airtight containers about a week. These would probably also freeze well.

2 Tbsp size hypoallergenic oatmeal cookies, shaped and ready to pop into the oven

More oatmeal cookies, still allergy friendly, these are 1 Tbsp size and just-baked.

Shredded Wheat shortbread cookies with chocolate drizzle (vegan)

This is a great use for leftover (dry) shredded wheat cereal. Makes a dense shortbread-like cookie with a bit of crunch and just enough of a hit of chocolate to keep me happy.

Background

Sometimes I make a recipe and I love the idea or some key part of it, but there are also a few things about it that just bug the bejeezes out of me and I want to KEEP making the recipe again until I get it where I want it to be. Sometimes it works out! This is one of those.

Original/source recipe

This started out as the vegan chocolate oatmeal bars from A Virtual Vegan, which are very tasty but also, for me, posed some interesting questions.

Pros:

• Oatmeal and chocolate!
• Nice, dense texture with a bit of crumbly crunch!
• A bit sweet but not very sweet!
• Just enough salt to add a little savory something!
• Vegan!

Cons:

• Chocolate ganache used a lot of milk so it was very loose and did not want to set even after some time in the fridge.
• The loaf-slice “bar” format seemed fun until I tried to eat a piece. I ended up with a rather large bread-slice of cookie/cake, with a bunch of chocolate ganache on top that wanted to fall off (or was all to one “side” depending on how you eat it. Kind of like if your pizza cheese was an inch thick and located only on the edge of the crust).
• Shocking to say, but it seemed like too much chocolate (???? …I know.)

Some of this maybe was me not doing the original recipe quite right the first time, who knows. But I kept mentally puzzling over WHY the recipe didn’t end up being what I thought it COULD be and/or wanted it to be. So I thought about it for two weeks and then made these.

My version

This recipe is still kind of in process so I might make a few more changes, but the key things I adjusted for now were:

• Subbed almond flour for 1/3c of the normal flour to give it a bit of extra density
• Replaced oats with shredded wheat cereal, whirled in food processor (no real reason for this other than that M. bought cereal he decided he didn’t want and I wanted to bake something with it)
• Increased milk since ground up cereal soaked it up
• Reduced salt a bit
• Halved chocolate
• Reduced amount of milk added to chocolate to make ganache so it would be less runny
• Instead of putting in a loaf pan, I rolled this out in a thick dough and stamped out as cookies.

What I’m still thinking about: Next time I will try adding a pinch of nutmeg to the dough, and maybe something fun into the chocolate (peanut oil? Rum flavored extract?). Maybe add a very small splash of lemon or Apple cider vinegar in the dough and then reduce the salt a bit. Some crushed, toasted nuts (cashews?) might be nice. But I’m happy with this version (for now).

Recipe for Shredded Wheat shortbread cookies with chocolate drizzle

Makes: About 34 2″ cookies.

Prep time: 60 to 90 min

See bottom of post for photos.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c plain shredded wheat cereal, crushed and whirled in food processor before measuring. (If you buy the large shredded wheat “biscuit” type that comes in squares the size of a small country, this is 4 squares or 2 packets. I used Barbara’s brand)
• 1 2/3 c all purpose flour
• 1/3 c almond flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt (up to 1/4 tsp of you are used to more salt in food)
• 1 c sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1c to 1 1/2 c unsweetened dairy-free milk (I used Almond Breeze Unsweetened Vanilla), separated into: 1/2 c, 1/4 c, and “the rest”
• 1/2 c coconut oil, melted together with only 1/2c almond milk.
• 1/2 c vegan semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350⁰F and put parchment paper on 2 baking sheets.
2. In a large bowl, mix all dry ingredients, including sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, combine coconut oil and the 1/2 c almond milk. Melt in microwave on half power or for 10-20sec at a time until just melted. Mix in vanilla.
4. In the middle of the dry mix make a hole and pour in the wet mix.
5. With a fork, or a hand- or stand-mixer on low, combine wet into dry. It will probably be mostly gritty crumbs and not stick together.
6. Add more milk as needed in 1/4-cup increments until the dough sticks together enough to roll into one big ball without looking shaggy (bits shouldn’t be sloughing off a lot if you pick it up)
7. Take one of your parchment papers from your baking sheets and put it on the counter. Sprinkle flour on top of the paper, put the dough ball on that. Sprinkle more flour on dough and pat the dough into a flattish shape. Use a rolling pin (or press with the heel of your hand) to roll out your dough to a thickness of about 1/3″ (or about 1cm). Sprinkle more flour as needed while rolling it out. Try to roll it squarish if you can.
8. Cut out your cookies into 2″ squares and transfer to papered baking sheet. I used a ravioli stamp, you could instead use a cookie cutter that’s round or square, or just cut them with a knife. If they want to stick to the paper, flour a thin spatula or knife and pick them up with that. Space about a half inch apart. When it’s all remainders, use your hands to squish the remainder into a new dough to stamp out the rest.
9. Put cookies in oven and set timer to 10min.
10. Put chocolate chips in a bowl and set aside. In another cup or bowl heat up 1/4 cup milk in microwave. Pour half of it over chocolate. Stir gently for about 30 seconds. If it does not melt fully, add a bit more milk, I didn’t use the full 1/4c and preferred toor microwave partially melted chocolate mix on 1/3 power in 20sec increments until it’s fully melted.
11. Cookies need to bake for about 15min total but you will check and rotate them at 10min. To check them, remove the tray from the oven and look to see if there is a bit of blush at the outer corners of the cookies. You can also use a fork or spatula to lift a corner cookie gently and check the bottom. If the toasted area isn’t noticeable on at least 3 sides, put them back in the oven (rotate pan) and recheck every 5min. When they are blushed / toasted on at least 3 outside edges of the underside of the cookie, but the middle of the cookie’s underside is still not toasted, they are ready!
12. Let cool on pan or rack for 10min.
13. Gently pick up cookies and arrange them right next to each other.
14. Re-melt chocolate in microwave at low power if it hardened up a bit; it needs to be wet. Now, using a fork held close above cookies, gently drizzle wet chocolate back and forth onto them.
15. Before putting cookies in a container, let sit for 30mn (or refrigerate) to allow chocolate to lose its wet shine and fully set. Check by tapping with a finger, if you don’t make a mark then chocolate is set.
16. Eat within about 4 days.

My clearance-bin ravioli stamp was not an efficient option for homemade ravioli but apparently it works great for cookies!

Cookies are done when the bottom is toasted all around but not in the middle.

Cookies artistically drizzled! Chocolate is still shiny and has not yet set.

(Note: un-drizzled cookies in back-right of photo are overdone, you can recognize this when the toasted edge has moved beyond just the outer tips of the corners that you see when the cookies are right-side-up, and the toasted color has crept up the the outside edges of the cookies’ flat sides)

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Penuche Frosting

I love pumpkin bread, and pumpkin cupcakes are even better …but for a brown, spicy, fall-flavored something like pumpkin bread, you need frosting to match. This simple penuche frosting comes from a recipe for applesauce cake, and makes a stiff, fondant-looking frosting somewhere between a brown-sugar glaze and maple syrup candy.

This recipe (based on this one) is like real bread: time-consuming in spurts, with a lot of periods where you just ignore it and go do something else.

Beforehand: Clear a shelf in the fridge to accommodate a cookie tray full of cooling cupcakes. Prep cupcake pan. Gather a wooden spoon; a medium sized, heavy saucepan; and an empty cookie sheet. If you want to serve these with hot apple cider and some ice cream, get that together too.

Penuche-Frosted Fall Pumpkin Cupcakes

Pumpkin Cupcakes

• 1 3/4 c all-purpose flour (or 1c wheat flour and 3/4 c white)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 4 Tbsp unsalted butter (or 1/3 c applesauce)
• 1 c packed dark-brown sugar
• 1/2 c white sugar (make it a heaping cup if your brown sugar is dark-brown
• Optional: 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp molasses
• 1/4 c vegetable oil
• 2/3 c water
• Scant 1 c canned pumpkin puree (not “pie filling”!)
• 2 large eggs or egg equivalent

Penuche Frosting

• 3/4 c firmly packed light brown sugar (or half granulated, half dark-brown)
• 3 Tbsp butter
• scant 1/8 c milk (I used light soymilk and added a pinch of powdered xanthan at the end before the cooling stage to help make sure things bound properly. Despite the name and its prevalence in long lists of suspicious-looking filler ingredients, xanthan gum is a natural ingredient and a pretty cool substitute for gelatin to help firm things up).
• pinch of salt

Pumpkin Cupcakes instructions:

1. Butter (or add cupcake papers to) a 12-cupcake pan. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, spices. In a larger bowl, beat together butter, sugars, and oil on high speed until fluffy, scraping sides often.
2. Add pumpkin and mix until blended. Add eggs or equivalent, one at a time, and mix until just incorporated. Mixing slowly, add flour mix and water until just incorporated.
3. Spread batter into prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, ~50min.
4. Remove from pan (if using cupcake papers) or let sit in pan 20min, and allow to cool completely so that frosting won’t detach itself. Start making penuche frosting when the cupcakes are mostly cooled.

Penuche Frosting instructions:

1. Combine all frosting ingredients in heavy saucepan over medium-low to medium heat stirring with a wooden spoon until boiling (boiling sugar is HOT, so be careful!). Reduce heat to a simmer and let it cook undisturbed for about 5min, or until it registers 234F on a candy thermometer (I don’t have one).
2. Have cupcakes ready, removed from their pan and assembled next to the cookie sheet.
3. Remove frosting from heat, add xanthan (if using), and stir vigorously (don’t splash) until well combined again, then keep stirring gently until mixture starts to look a little paler and lose its gloss. This mixing / cooling process may take 5-10 minutes of pretty lazy stirring.
   What to look for: A blop of the mix, removed with a spoon and drizzled back into the rest of it, should retain some type of shape for several seconds, demonstrating some reluctance to melt back in right away. What we want is frosting that will cool enough on the cupcake that it will harden up before dripping off the edges. The penuche will still have a bit of translucency, but it will look a bit closer to homemade caramel than to maple syrup.
4. Immediately begin to dip tops of cupcakes in still-wet frosting mix: invert cupcake, dip, twist, and then wipe off the edges against the side of the penuche pan.
5. Assemble frosted cupcakes on the cookie sheet as they are frosted. One or two drips are OK, but if the 1st one is dripping before the time you get to the 3rd or 4th one, you need to wait a few more minutes.
6. Put cookie sheet full of cupcakes into refrigerator to cool. Penuche should lose remaining translucency to look like in picture.

Serve cold, with hot apple cider and a bit of light vanilla ice cream.

Earl Grey Velvet Cupcakes

I found this Earl Grey Red Velvet Cake recipe a while ago and I’ve been wanting to try it. My friend had a Mary Kay party yesterday, so I decided to make these. The majority of people at work are Army guys who eat frozen food or eggs and protein powder for the majority of their meals, and they tend to class all food into “good” or “bad”, which is not the audience you want to try out new and unusual recipes on.

‘The Island of Dr Gâteau’ is a very cool blog by a cognitive neuroscientist who experiments with food and writes about the biology and psychology of eating. She makes many variations of red velvet (Vanilla Chai White Velvet and Burnt Butter and Pecan are the next ones I’ll try, I think) and I decided to try her Earl Grey Black Tea Red Velvet Cake.

As it turns out, all the ladies at this party were middle-aged school teachers and they were all on diets. My friend who was selling Mary Kay is a triathlete, so she ate two cupcakes. I’m working on a six pack so I wasn’t planning to eat any, but I love Earl Grey so I had to try it. It was amazing. I think this is my favorite cake I’ve made. Dr. Gâteau said the taste was subtle, but I think it was quite strong in mine–a deliciously light, almost citrus flavor from the bergamot.

I didn’t follow Dr Gâteau’s recipe exactly–rather, I used her idea of steeping Earl Grey in butter the night before and used that butter in the Red Velvet recipe I usually use. The only issue I ran into was that, while I steeped the tea in enough butter for both the cake and the frosting the night before, after melting it, steeping the tea, refrigerating it, melting it, and putting it through a sieve, I was 4 tablespoons short and had to use non-Earl Grey butter in the frosting. In the recipe below, I’ve added my guessed amount of extra butter needed for the flavoring.

The original ‘Anne’s Eats’ recipe uses vegetable oil instead of butter. I don’t know how steeping tea in vegetable oil and then refrigerating it would turn out, though. As Dr. Gâteau points out in her recipe, fats hold odor and flavor molecules better than water, so I think it would still work. I don’t suppose vegetable oil would quite solidify, but I think the point is to let it absorb the flavors for 24 hours more so than have it solidify.

I also didn’t add food coloring, and they turned out a nice pale brown. I found a recipe for red velvet using grated beets to color the cake, so I might try that next time, for I do love the color of beets.

Earl Grey Velvet Cupcakes
Adapted from ‘The Island of Dr. Gâteau” and “Annie’s Eats”
Yield: 1 9 x 13 sheet cake or about 24 cupcakes

For the Earl Grey Butter:

• For a full 24 cupcakes, use 4 sticks of butter. For a half recipe, try 2.5 sticks. Expect to lose about 4 tablespoons in the melting/solidifying process.
• 3 heaping tablespoons loose-leaf Earl Grey (1 heaping tablespoon is about 5 tea bags)

For the Cake:

• 2½ cups cake flour
• 1½ cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1½ cups Earl Grey butter
• 1 cup buttermilk*
• 2 tablespoons (1 oz.) liquid red food coloring (optional. Or use any color you choose OR 1 cup finely-grated beets)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar

*OR make your own buttermilk:

• 1 tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice
• 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon milk

Put vinegar/lemon into 1 cup measuring cup. Add milk to complete 1 cupful. Let stand for 5 minutes. Utilize.

For the frosting:

• 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature (if you use cold cheese and butter, the consistency will be better. If you’re beating the frosting by hand, use room temperature cheese and butter)
• 5 tablespoons Earl Grey butter, at room temperature (add regular unsalted butter if you didn’t make enough tea butter)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup strong Earl Grey tea (steeped for 10 minutes)
• 2½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Directions:

The night before you want to make the cake:  If you’re making a sheet cake, save the wrappers for greasing the pan on baking day. Melt the butter in a saucepan over very low heat. Once it is melted, take it off the heat. Add in the loose-leaf Earl Grey tea and stir. Leave at room temperature for an hour, then transfer to covered bowl and place in the fridge overnight.

The next day: Place the re-solidified butter in a saucepan again (you may have to microwave the bowl for 20 seconds or so to get the butter to dislodge) and melt over a very low heat until liquid. Strain out the tea by pouring the liquid butter through a sieve into a bowl (when I did this, some of the leaves got through the strainer. You could hardly see them in the final cake and they weren’t noticeable in texture). Press the tea into the sieve with a spoon in order to squeeze out the butter that it has absorbed. Leave the butter at room temperature for an hour, then place it back in the fridge for an hour or so, checking it regularly, until it has firmed up and is the consistency of soft butter.

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  If making cupcakes, line cupcake pans with paper liners. If making sheet cake, grease and sift a little flour into a sheet pan (this just keeps the cake from sticking. It’s unnecessary. I use the butter wrappers so you may as well…).
In a medium bowl, combine the cake flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt; whisk to blend.  In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, butter, buttermilk, food coloring, vanilla and vinegar.  Beat until somewhat blended (it won’t really blend, and as soon as it’s smooth, it’ll separate again. Don’t worry about it).  Mix in the dry ingredients and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared liners or pour it into the single sheet pan.  Bake, rotating the pans halfway through baking, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 18 minutes (more like 30 for a sheet cake).  Let cool in the pans 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the frosting, combine the cream cheese and butter in a bowl and beat until well combined and smooth, about 2-3 minutes.  Mix in the vanilla extract and the tea.  Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar until totally incorporated and then beat until smooth.  Frost cooled cupcakes as desired.